Bucket gardens appear again

The Food Bank of Central New York and Cornell Cooperative Extensions of Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties will help distribute more than 400 tomato plants to north country residents through the annual Garden-in-a-Bucket program.

Three-hundred bucket gardens, composed of a 5-gallon plastic bucket filled with soil and planted with a tomato seedling, were distributed last week to Jefferson County food pantries.

The food pantries in St. Lawrence County received 60, while 60 also were distributed in Lewis County.

"Even though it doesn't look like much in the beginning, once it starts growing, it'd shade everything else out we put in the bucket," said Rosalind L. Cook, a resource educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Jefferson County.

Many of the bucket gardens already have been disbursed to local communities, providing fresh food for meals — something that Ms. Cook said might be hard to find at food pan-tries.

"I certainly hope this might spark some interest in them doing a little more gardening," she said of the people who use a food pantry. "It's like getting a pet and this is the goldfish version; if you get a goldfish now, you'll get a bigger pet, or garden, next time."

Jefferson County's buckets were put together May 26 by about 30 students in the LaFargeville Advantage after-school program.

The Food Bank provided funding for the program, while Five Cedars Greenhouse, Theresa, donated 300 tomato plants for the Jefferson County bucket gardens.

Beth J. Slater, Food Bank director of member programs, said the Food Bank has offered its Garden-in-a-Bucket program for the past six years.

"The whole idea of a garden in a bucket is a way to show how people can stretch their dollars, whether you can do it through home gardening or you can buy seeds with food stamps," she said. "It's a great program that anyone can do, and it comes with instructions on how to garden."

A total of 1,240 bucket gardens with "patio-type tomato plants" were distributed throughout the Food Bank's 11-county coverage area.

Last year, the Food Bank and Cornell extension sites helped distribute about 985 bucket garden units, with 150 going to Jefferson County and 170 to Lewis County.